{"id":14548,"date":"2020-06-18T09:42:50","date_gmt":"2020-06-18T09:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/?p=14548"},"modified":"2020-07-07T10:26:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T10:26:00","slug":"mourning-for-egyptian-activist-sarah-hegazi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/mourning-for-egyptian-activist-sarah-hegazi\/","title":{"rendered":"Mourning for Egyptian activist Sarah Hegazi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2017, queer activist Sarah Hegazi raised a rainbow flag in support of a gay singer at a concert in Cairo. Now she has died.<\/p>\n<p>The trigger for her ordeal was a visit to a concert by the Lebanese indie pop band Mashrou\u02bc Leila in Cairo on 22 September 2017. Like some others in the audience, the studied software developer and openly lesbian Hegazi waved a rainbow flag during the concert. With this action she wanted to support the gay singer of the band, Hamed Sinno, one of the few openly gay artists from the Middle East.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-wrap\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I met <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SaraHegazy?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#SaraHegazy<\/a> recently in Canada. She was clearly in pain, traumatized by her torture, suffering, and separated from her country, but very much wanting to turn a new page. It was too much to bear. <\/p>\n<p>Lest anyone have any doubt, the government of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Egypt?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Egypt<\/a> killed her. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/DE7uctU94E\">https:\/\/t.co\/DE7uctU94E<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Sarah Leah Whitson (@sarahleah1) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sarahleah1\/status\/1272153339128614912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 14, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<h2>Arrest, imprisonment, torture and escape<\/h2>\n<p>The band initially described the concert in Cairo as &#8220;one of the best shows we have ever played&#8221;. What followed was less beautiful. The Egyptian authorities carried out police raids among the concert visitors*. At least 57 people were arrested, including Sarah Hegazi as the only woman.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the concertgoers were sentenced to up to six years in prison, some of them for &#8220;promoting sexual deviance and debauchery&#8221;. Sarah Hegazi was sent to a women&#8217;s prison where she was humiliated, raped and tortured. After three months in prison she was released and sentenced to pay 2,000 Egyptian pounds, or about 109 euros. She lost her job as a software developer and was harassed by some family members, so she eventually fled to Canada, where she was granted political asylum.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-wrap\">\n<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p><script async=\"1\" defer=\"1\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/de_DE\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&amp;version=v7.0\" nonce=\"17CcNhLz\"><\/script><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-post\" data-href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/freeLGBTQeg\/posts\/2631724053812831\" data-width=\"750\">\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/freeLGBTQeg\/posts\/2631724053812831\" class=\"fb-xfbml-parse-ignore\">\n<p>English below &#8211; Invitation for audio messages \u0627\u0628\u0639\u062a\u0648\u0644\u0646\u0627 \u0631\u0633\u0627\u0644\u0629 \u0635\u0648\u062a\u064a\u0629 \u0644\u0648 \u062a\u062d\u0628\u0648\u0627 \u062a\u0634\u0627\u0631\u0643\u0648\u0627  \u0627\u0644\u0649 \u0627\u062e\u0648\u0627\u062a\u0646\u0627 \u0648\u0627\u062e\u0648\u0627\u0646\u0646\u0627 \u0627\u0644\u0643\u0648\u064a\u0631\u064a\u064a\u0646&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Gepostet von <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/freeLGBTQeg\/\">Free LGBTQ Egypt<\/a> am&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/freeLGBTQeg\/posts\/2631724053812831\">Dienstag, 16. Juni 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Hegazi had not been able to recover from her experiences. She suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, which, as she said herself, worsened after the death of her mother. On 14 June 2020, Sarah Hegazi took her own life. What remains is a hand-written farewell letter in Arabic, presumably written by Hegazi, in which she writes<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;To my brothers and sisters,<\/p>\n<p>I have tried to find redemption and I have not succeeded; forgive me.<\/p>\n<p>To my friends,<\/p>\n<p>The way was cruel and I am too weak to resist; forgive me.<\/p>\n<p>To the world,<\/p>\n<p>You were terribly cruel; but I forgive you.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>(Sara Hegazy, 14 June 2020)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Mashrou\u02bc Leila<\/h2>\n<div class=\"video-wrap\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Mashrou&#039; Leila - Lil Watan ( Official Music Video ) | \u0645\u0634\u0631\u0648\u0639 \u0644\u064a\u0644\u0649 - \u0644\u0644\u0648\u0637\u0646\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Qn3EFPOuEGM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>The band Mashrou\u02bc Leila (&#8220;nocturnal project&#8221;) consists of five Lebanese. Singer Hamed Sinno lives openly gay, homosexuality is a theme in several songs of the band.<\/p>\n<p>Directly political songs are rare, but this is not necessary in an environment where singing about love and sex alone is enough: &#8220;Sex is highly political&#8221;, says Sinno, &#8220;if people in Lebanon go to prison because they are gay, they are not accused for their queer identity, but for the sexual act&#8221;. Or, as in the case of Hegazi, because the Egyptian authorities obviously wanted to set an example.<\/p>\n<p>On the death of Sarah Hegazi, Hamed Sinno wrote on Facebook<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Many people are quick to point out mental illness and depression. But mental illness does not exist in a vacuum. They are a product of structural violence. It&#8217;s the power heteropatriarchal capitalism exerts on the body.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-wrap\">\n<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p><script async=\"1\" defer=\"1\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/de_DE\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&amp;version=v7.0\" nonce=\"qsxsGXUy\"><\/script><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-video\" data-href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/1328501785\/videos\/10223708227916890\/\" data-width=\"960\">\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/1328501785\/videos\/10223708227916890\/\" class=\"fb-xfbml-parse-ignore\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/1328501785\/videos\/10223708227916890\/\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m sorry this is taking a minute, but I haven\u2019t been able to articulate my thoughts about Sarah\u2019s death. To be honest, my thoughts are constantly interrupted by stabs of resurfacing trauma. I suspect this is the same reason I haven\u2019t been able to write a song in years, but that\u2019s irrelevant. I realize a lot of people are waiting for me to say something, but what can I say now that I haven\u2019t been saying for years? Why should my opinion matter anyway?Many are quick to point out mental illness, and her depression, but pathologizing mental illness does nothing to explain why some of us are afflicted and others are not. Mental illness does not exist in a void. It is a product of structural violence. The power of heteropatriarchal capitalism is the way it inhabits the body. We are born into trauma, and we carry it with us wherever we go. \u201cMinorities\u201d show higher death rates in every kind of \u201cnatural\u201d death. We have higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, respiratory failure, cancer, anything. You name it. That is what trauma does to the body. That is what hate does to the body. The thought that someone can leave a society that keeps trying to kill them, and still carry that society inside them, still be moved to taking their own lives, chills me to the bone, as I reflect on my own exile, and the exile of the people I love. We spend the first part of our lives demanding air in our homelands, and then we leave to countries where we are promised air, only to find out we were robbed of lungs. Continuing to not address the structural inequality that produces this much suffering is a crime. We might not actively be contributing to it, but we actively benefit from it. That too is murder. I have nothing to say that we don\u2019t all already know. My opinion as always doesn\u2019t matter. What is this ridiculous thirst for commentary from \u201ccelebrities?\u201d Why do you need me to say anything for you to get angry? Why do you need performative politics to validate your subjectivity? Am I allowed to grieve for a minute before I\u2019m skewered for not responding \u201cfast enough.\u201d  I was once deluded enough in my optimism that I honestly believed music could change the world. I honestly believed that if people saw that I, a faggot, loved, and cried, and suffered, and laughed, and danced, and fought  for Palestine, and fought masculinity, and fought racism, and fought capitalism, and fought and fought and fought and fought and fought I honestly thought they\u2019d understand that I was human. That we were human. I got away with it for long enough that I started to believe my own optimism, and so did others, and they suffered for it. Her blood is on my hands as much as it is on yours. It should have been me in that prison cell. I apologize if I gave anyone hope that they\u2019ll one day see us as human. The truth is, they\u2019ve always known we\u2019re human. That\u2019s why they pretend to be doing god\u2019s bidding when they kill us.I don\u2019t know what to make of the amount of hate I\u2019ve seen over the last two days. We are a society that thinks it can speak for god. We are a society that thinks it can correct gods creations. We are a society that murders the innocent and spits on their graves before they\u2019re even buried. None of this is gods will. None of this is religion. This is a society of murderers using god to justify their bigotry. What is this god you believe in who creates anything or anyone less than perfect? What is this god who condones this kind of hatred? What is this god you believe in who needs you, a repugnant loathsome maggot, to correct god\u2019s work? To my young lgbtq+ following, you are god\u2019s creation, as much as anyone else is. You are perfect. You are beautiful. You are loved. You deserve better. To everyone else, I leave you with Sarah\u2019s last words:\u0627\u0644\u0633\u0645\u0627 \u0627\u062d\u0644\u0649 \u0645\u0646 \u0627\u0644\u0623\u0631\u0636\u060c \u0648\u0623\u0646\u0627 \u0639\u0627\u0648\u0632\u0647 \u0627\u0644\u0633\u0645\u0627 \u0645\u0634 \u0627\u0644\u0623\u0631\u0636 The sky is sweeter than the earth, and I need the sky not the earth.<\/p>\n<p>Gepostet von <a href=\"#\" role=\"button\">Hamed Zane Sinno<\/a> am Montag, 15. Juni 2020<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>If If you are feeling suicidal, thinking about hurting yourself, or are concerned that someone you know may be in danger of hurting himself or herself, you will find immediate help by logging onto Suicide.org. It is available 24 hours a day and provides help, support and international suicide prevention hotlines.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2017, queer activist Sarah Hegazi raised a rainbow flag in support of a gay singer at a concert in Cairo. Now she has died. <a href=\"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/mourning-for-egyptian-activist-sarah-hegazi\/\"><\/p>\n<p><i class=\"showAllLink\">more&#8230;<\/i><\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":14554,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":""},"categories":[9,411,1,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14548"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14548"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14555,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14548\/revisions\/14555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}